• Home
  • Independent Voter News
  • Quizzes
  • Election Dissection
  • Sections
  • Events
  • Directory
  • About Us
  • Glossary
  • Opinion
  • Campaign Finance
  • Redistricting
  • Civic Ed
  • Voting
  • Fact Check
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Government Ethics>
  3. government ethics>

Watchdogs want to extend limits on board service by House members

Geoff West
August 02, 2019
Watchdogs want to extend limits on board service by House members

GOP Rep. Chris Collins of New York at his August 2018 arraignment on insider trading charges.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

The prohibition on House members serving as directors of outside groups should include nonprofit and private company boards, not only publicly traded enterprises, three prominent watchdog groups say.

The House has barred its members from such corporate boards only since January. The new Democratic majority changed the rules largely in response to the case of Republican Rep. Chris Collins of New York, charged a year ago with fraud, conspiracy and lying to the FBI in an alleged insider stock trading scheme involving Innate Immunotherapeutics, a biotech company where he was a board member. (Collins was re-elected last fall and is set to go on trial in February.)

The rules change resolution also set up a pair of House members to help the Ethics Committee recommend by the end of the year whether members and their aides should also be restricted from holding other outside positions.


Craig Holman of Public Citizen, a progressive consumer and democracy reform advocacy group, told the panel that House members holding board positions at private entities pose a widespread risk of conflicts of interest. He cited unpublished reporting by The New York Times that at least 60 members sit on the boards of private companies, most of which are limited liability corporations.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

"I would like to again urge you to go a little further than banning members from sitting on publicly owned corporate boards," he said at a hearing in late July. "The same types of conflicts of interest apply to for-profit corporations. And so, I encourage you to take a look at extending the ban to for-profit corporations across the board."

That recommendation was also endorsed in a written statement from Issue One, a cross-partisan political reform group. (It is incubating, but journalistically independent from, The Fulcrum)

Susan Wild of Pennsylvania, the Democrat on the working group, said she was "very concerned" about members' relationship to LLCs. At a minimum, she said she would propose that all partners in such entities be disclosed on congressional financial disclosures.

Donald Sherman, deputy director at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), said the potential for conflicts of interest also applies to positions at closely held companies.

CREW, Public Citizen and Issue One also asked the committee to consider restricting members from taking board positions at nonprofit organizations, specifically those that lobby the federal government, receive public funds or engage in "dark money" spending to influence elections.

Delaney Marsco, an ethics attorney at Campaign Legal Center, said the new rule banning positions at publicly traded companies was an "important first step" but urged the House to go further, including a ban on members holding positions at companies with federal contracts.

Other recommendations to the working group included further restricting congressional stock trading or ownership. But the Republican member, Van Taylor of Texas, reminded the witnesses that the panel's charge was limited to studying outside positions.

From Your Site Articles
  • Directory - The Fulcrum ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • Ethics working group examines restrictions on members in outside ... ›
  • Restrictions on Outside Employment | House Committee on Ethics ›
government ethics

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

How a college freshman led the effort to honor titans of democracy reform

Jeremy Garson

Our poisonous age of absolutism

Jay Paterno

Re-imagining Title IX: An opportunity to flex our civic muscles

Lisa Kay Solomon

'Independent state legislature theory' is unconstitutional

Daniel O. Jamison

How afraid are we?

Debilyn Molineaux

Politicians certifying election results is risky and unnecessary

Kevin Johnson
latest News

How the anti-abortion movement shaped campaign finance law and paved the way for Trump

Amanda Becker, The 19th
10h

Podcast: Journalist and political junkie Ken Rudin

Our Staff
11h

A study in contrasts: Low-turnout runoffs vs. Alaska’s top-four, all-mail primary

David Meyers
23 June

Video: Team Democracy Urges Citizens to Sign SAFE Pledge

Our Staff
23 June

Podcast: Past, present, future

Our Staff
23 June

Video: America's vulnerable elections

Our Staff
22 June
Videos

Video: Memorial Day 2022

Our Staff

Video: Helping loved ones divided by politics

Our Staff

Video: What happened in Virginia?

Our Staff

Video: Infrastructure past, present, and future

Our Staff

Video: Beyond the headlines SCOTUS 2021 - 2022

Our Staff

Video: Should we even have a debt limit

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Did economists move the Democrats to the right?

Our Staff
02 May

Podcast: The future of depolarization

Our Staff
11 February

Podcast: Sore losers are bad for democracy

Our Staff
20 January

Deconstructed Podcast from IVN

Our Staff
08 November 2021
Recommended
Bridge Alliance intern Sachi Bajaj speaks at the June 12 Civvy Awards.

How a college freshman led the effort to honor titans of democracy reform

Leadership
abortion law historian Mary Ziegler

How the anti-abortion movement shaped campaign finance law and paved the way for Trump

Campaign Finance
Podcast: Journalist and political junkie Ken Rudin

Podcast: Journalist and political junkie Ken Rudin

Media
Abortion rights and anti-abortion protestors at the Supreme Court

Our poisonous age of absolutism

Big Picture
Virginia primary voter

A study in contrasts: Low-turnout runoffs vs. Alaska’s top-four, all-mail primary

Video: Team Democracy Urges Citizens to Sign SAFE Pledge

Video: Team Democracy Urges Citizens to Sign SAFE Pledge

Voting